Change
by Special Patrol Groupie
Summary: Anything - ANYTHING - I may say seems to constitute a spoiler. It's only 1,278 words, just read it. :


I got up early that Saturday morning, yawned, ran my hand over my face and opened the curtains. The sun was just coming up over the eastern horizon, lighting up the green fields that scampered over the hills and through the dales, jumping over my hedges and exploding into a riot of wildflower colours pooled behind my house. I inhaled the delicious fragrance, delighting in another day in this beautiful countryside, the air free of the horrible petrol tang I knew all too well from my years in London. I thought I'd better enjoy it; I was going back to London for a reunion with my old college roommates.

For a moment, I wondered how much they had changed. I pictured each in turn, subtracting hair, adding weight, multiplying wrinkles. I turned and caught a view of myself in the three-way mirror. I smiled as I imagined the three of them getting a look at me: "You've changed."

"Oh, is it that noticeable?" I said aloud to my imagination, and I laughed. My voice was a little – no, a lot – higher pitched than it used to be. Some changes stared you in the face – literally, if you were of a certain height – while others would only be seen by certain people, though known if the phrase "post-op" was mentioned. I don't miss that. I'm told that as they wheeled me into the operating room, I was singing something about putting it right.

From my earliest memories I always felt misplaced in a male body. It's like I was wearing something a few sizes too big. I had the wrong body parts to do what I wanted to do. What those parts have to do with sewing, baking, knitting and arranging flowers I have no idea. Furthermore, this body I was in smelled funny, it was hairy and ugly and ungainly. It had nothing to do with the spirit inside it.

I spent 30 years believing that my problem was I was gay, and I tried desperately hard to change the spirit, and when I realized I couldn't change it, I tried to kill myself. A year of intensive therapy taught me, among other things, that my problem wasn't my orientation, it was the body-mind-spirit-whatever connection. Simply stated, I was a woman in a man's body. As if that was any better! I told my therapist I might as well kill myself anyway, but she told me that if I really felt I was a woman inside, I could always change the externals to match it. ...

Of course I knew this, but I just never applied it to my situation. I promised not to attempt suicide until I'd given her idea some thought. But I went home feeling oddly light and free somehow. My birthday was that week. I ordered myself a nightgown and I redid the bedroom a la Laura Ashley. It was a bit over the top, but when I put on that nightgown and crawled under those covers, I felt wonderful.

By 33 I was living as female. At 35 I started the hormone therapy that changed me externally into a female. At 38 I had the operation.

I'm not the best looking female in the world, but that's not the point of going through all this. I feel right. I am free to fuss with my hair, put on makeup and jewelry and dresses and high heels, paint my nails (not to mention have nails long enough to be worth painting) – but I'm also free to care about people openly, to take care of people, to cry when I need to. And I'm not saying that I think all women should be submissive, but I am, and I like it that way.

Yes, I have a boyfriend. Yes, he knows. I'm telling you, it was pretty bloody weird going out with a man the first time. ...

I am fortunate to be in a field where people are educated and sophisticated enough to understand and accept that sort of thing more readily than the general population. Not that everyone can handle it. I did lose a few friends in the profession because of the change, but I gained others. I shed people who were toxic, who I probably should have shed even if I'd chosen to go on as a man. That, too, was liberating.

I hadn't seen my college roommates for a long time – more than 15 years; I didn't know what they'd think. Well, I'd soon find out.

Just to make the point, I pulled out all the stops with the makeup: red, sensuous lips, blush, liquid eyeliner all the way round and smoky eyeshadow. I dressed in a tight black minidress, four-inch spiked heels and fishnet stockings. I doused myself with a flowery perfume. I arranged my hair into a tall beehive. I looked myself over in the three-way mirror and liked it – I looked like a somewhat more refined Amy Winehouse, minus the tattoos and with lighter-coloured hair.

But maybe I should wear something else. I found the appropriate garment in the wardrobe, a remnant of my college days, and put it on. There would be no denying who I was now.

The train ride was uneventful. I flirted with the conductor and with a lad young enough to be my son, not seriously enough to get anything started but seriously enough to make them both feel good about themselves. I read an issue of Cosmo and an issue of Marie Claire, both of which I'd tucked into my commodious purse. I drank a glass of white wine and nibbled some crackers.

I got off the train at the station near the old house and looked around. They were supposed to meet me here. I saw Neil – he was the easiest to spot in a crowd – and walked toward him. No, I sashayed. I smiled. He smiled back – then he noticed what I was wearing. He gasped. The others turned around. I kept walking, right up to them.

"Hi, lads," I said in my sexiest voice, tossing my head suggestively.

They all stared, open-mouthed. I wanted to laugh out loud.

As you might have expected, it was Mike who recovered his composure first.

"'Ello there, Vyvyan. You've changed."

Someone started shaking my shoulder from behind. "Vyvyan? Vyvyan!"

"WHAT!" I exclaimed.

"Vyvyan, wake up! You're having a nightmare!"

I opened my eyes to darkness. "Vyvyan," Chel's voice said near my ear, "wake up!"

"I'm awake!" I said, taking a quick and surreptitious inventory of my body. "Oh, thank God!"

"That bad, huh?" she asked, spooning against my back.

"I dreamed I'd had a sex change operation," I said, bewildered. "And – I liked it! It felt so real, and so right –"

She laughed. "You're about 600 percent male."

"But suppose it's just a – a cover-up?"

"Vyvyan, dreams are symbolic of other things, don't take them literally! You probably have issues with your mum."

"Probably?"

"OK, poor choice of words. You do have issues with your mum. They've just resurfaced for some reason."

"Oh, God, don't try to analyze me at this hour!"

"Don't you worry," she said, yawning. "I'm going back to sleep. You should, too. Oh, and –"

"Yes?"

"If you get the urge to try on my underwear, don't. Tell me instead and I'll order you some."

"Don't you worry," I murmured, hoping I wouldn't remember this one in the morning.


End file.
